Jaroslav Paška (EFD). – (SK) Mr President, the Regulation of November 2011 gave the European Commission new powers to coordinate budgets and reform programmes of the Member States of the Union. At the same time, this Regulation imposed the obligation on Member States to send, in addition to the draft national budget, a number of other documents related to the implementation of economic reforms in their countries to Brussels for review and approval.

I believe that as this new instrument for coordinating Member States’ economic policies has been in place for one year, the Commission should review the scope and structure and nature of the data forwarded to Brussels by the Member States for review and approval so that the essence of the required information is not lost as a result of the large number of diverse and non-transparent data. If, however, the Commission wishes to develop a truly high-quality European macroeconomic plan as the basis for the substantive coordination of budgetary policies, it should have correctly selected information available to it from all 27 EU Member States using a clear and meaningful structure. I therefore firmly believe that the simplification and clarification of the information base of this instrument would only increase its effectiveness.